Yeah, we’re the ones that don’t get it. All of us are in the wrong. You and you alone have correctly predicted the course of congressional deliberations and negotiations with the White House for the next ten-plus months. We all bow before your genius.

[rolls eyes]

“Congress is just going to go the the way I’ve stated.”

Yes, it’s going to go that way because you said so. Nyah, nyah, nyah…

How old are you? Ten?

My four-year old nephew puts together less juvenile and more thoughtful arguments.

“The administration doens’t have any real resolve on this.”

Yes, the Administration is just joking. All those Augustine Committee meetings were just for fun. And that blue-ribbon report is just for the prety pictures. And that six billion dollars that the White House added to NASA’s budget in an era of historic federal deficits was just to fake out congress.

Are you serious or are you trolling with this goofiness?

“If Congress goes with Ares I and Orion then the adminstration will accept it.”

Why? When Congress cut the VSE in its first appropriations bills, the Bush II Administration didn’t accept it — they threatened a veto. And Congress restored the funding.

Despite all the whining, Congress always follows the White House on major funded changes in the direction of NASA’s human space flight program — Apollo, Shuttle, Freedom, ISS, and the VSE. There’s no evidence that history will be any different this time.

“My view is that this isn’t just a few interested parties against everyone else.”

By definition, it is. There are only a handful or two of states and districts with major Constellation work. Everyone else in Congress either doesn’t care or is eyeing that Constellation money for their own interests. Kill the President’s budget request for NASA and those Constellation congressmen risk losing more NASA jobs in their districts and state than if they pass the President’s budget largely intact.

FWIW…

Still way, way cheaper than Shuttle or Ares I/Orion.

FWIW…

My thoughts in depth

pretty realistic Robert G. Oler

Little on Ares I was off-the-shelf or a close derivative of existing hardware. The lower-stage SRB was an unflown 5-segment motor, not the 4-segment used on STS, and required a new propellant grain and geometry. To squeeze every bit of performance from the 5-segment SRB, the lower-stage nozzle was going to have to be the longest composite nozzle ever made, pushing the limits of high-temperature composite structures. Because the 5-segment SRB wasn’t attached to an STS ET (or other large damping structure), several thrust oscillation countermeasures were needed.. The upper-stage J-2X engine needed to deliver substantially higher thrust than the Apollo-era J-2, necessitating a redesign of every component of that engine. Even the parachutes for recovering the lower-stage were larger than any ever flown, pushing the limits of that technology due to the weight of the 5-segment SRB.

Ares I used old technology, but practically all the subsystems and components were new designs and developments, regardless of whether they could point to heritage hardware or not.

FWIW…

what you cannot seem to grasp is that the government option has failed.

Robert G. Oler